Daughter of Joy (28 page)

“As wonderful as she is, she’s never been the one who could heal you. Only God can do that.”

Similar words … Abby’s words … plucked at Conor’s memory. As if struck, he reared back.
Nothing is worth the loss of one’s conscience …
he heard her say.
You have to find your own answers …

Had Abby then, seen the same failings in him that Sally now spoke of? Had she known of his fatal flaws, and finally realized she had become more of a hindrance, shielding him from a reality only he could face and change? Yet if Sally had never returned … Abby might have never known … just as perhaps he might have never known.

You have to find your own answers …

A soul-deep anguish flooded him. Dear God, he didn’t know how.
He didn’t know how!

Conor buried his face in his hands. “I hate you, Sally,” he groaned. “I hate you so much!”

“Why, Conor?” he heard her ask, her voice gentle now. “Tell me why.”

Ever so slowly, he lifted his gaze to her and saw such a tender look of love and compassion burning in Sally’s eyes that it gave him the courage to tell her. “Because your failings, your despair, your fears, are as much mine as they are yours,” Conor said at last, uttering words that he realized were long buried and denied truths. Truths as bitter as gall, as searing as acid, as terrifying as death. “And I can’t hide anymore from the image you reflect back to me.”

“Abby,” Hannah called, as she let the lace curtains fall back in place at the front window, “Ella and Evan are here.”

In the act of setting the iron on the cookstove top to cool, Abby glanced up. “What perfect timing,” she said with a laugh. “I just finished the last blouse. Can you put these clothes away, Hannah, while I tidy up?”

“Of course.” The girl gathered the neatly ironed blouses, skirts, and dresses, and hurried off.

Abby quickly checked the teakettle on the stove. Its watery contents were already simmering and would soon be ready. After removing her apron, folding down her sleeves, and rebuttoning the cuffs, she hurried through the small parlor of the cottage they’d just moved into three weeks ago after a nearly two month stay at Nelly’s. She paused at the front door for one final check of her face and hair in the oval, oak-framed mirror before plastering on her most welcoming smile and opening the door.

Ella stood on the stoop, beaming back. Behind her, crisp golden leaves fell from the oak trees, skittering and dancing in the bright October sun. Evan, his arms loaded with packages, halted behind her, peering around Ella for sight of Hannah.

“Welcome, welcome.” Abby reached out to grasp her friend’s hand. She paused to cock her head. “Hannah will be out in a minute, Evan. She’s just putting away some clothes.”

Evan’s expression of concern faded, to be replaced by a look of relief. “Oh … good. I was afraid she was ill or something.”

“She’s in the best of health,” Abby assured him as she led them into the parlor. In the past three months since she had left Culdee Creek, Evan not only always accompanied Ella on her monthly visits, but also managed to find some reason to show up at least every other week on his own.

The young man was definitely infatuated with Hannah. He had come right out and told her as much just two weeks ago. And Hannah, though still wary, was noticeably more animated and happy each time Evan came. They were, Abby feared, truly falling in love.

Just then Hannah appeared from the back bedroom. Evan dumped all his packages on the sofa, and hurried to her. Taking her hand in both of his, he lifted it to his mouth for a long, tender kiss. “I missed you,” he whispered, tucking her arm beneath his. “Did you miss me?”

The girl gazed back at him in rapt affection. “Very, very much.”

Abby and Ella exchanged wry glances.

“I brought you and Jackson some gifts.” Evan gestured to the parcels on the sofa.

“You shouldn’t have,” Hannah protested, then giggled in girlish delight. “It’s wonderful of you, of course, but I know you don’t make much—”

“Hush, sweetheart,” he silenced her. “I have a roof over my head and three squares a day. If I didn’t spend it on you and Jackson, I’d most likely waste it in some saloon. So you see,” he added with a roguish grin, “you’re keeping me out of harm’s way.”

Abby chuckled. “Now that’s as fine a reason as I’ve ever heard.” She took Ella by the arm and led her into the kitchen.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” Abby took down two porcelain cups and saucers, each decorated with a delicate anemone flower spray, as Ella settled herself in one of the two kitchen table chairs. “I assume our young love birds prefer a bit of privacy in the parlor.”

“I’m certain they would,” Ella said with a laugh. “And yes, I’d love a cup of tea.” She shivered and rubbed her arms briskly. “The weather’s taking a turn for the worse, and here it’s only mid-October. Where has the summer gone?”

“You mean the second and shortest of our two seasons?” Abby teased, as she set the cups and saucers on the table, then walked back to take up the teakettle from the stove. “We’re lucky if we even get four months of summer.” She poured boiling water over the tealeaves in the bottom of the matching porcelain teapot—“and we’re long overdue for some cold weather.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Ella admitted. “At any rate, it probably won’t seem quite so cold for me this winter, what with my husband to cuddle up with, and a new baby growing in my belly to keep me warm.”

Abby plopped the teapot down on the table with a thud. “What?” she stammered, not certain she’d heard correctly. “You’re not …”

Her friend’s face split in a wide grin. “Oh, yes, I am. I’m going to have another baby this coming spring.”

“But I thought …” Abby settled heavily in the other chair and just stared.

Ella shot a quick glance over her shoulder to see if Evan and Hannah could hear. The two were seated on the sofa at the far end of the parlor, hands clasped together, their heads almost touching, talking in whispers.

The red-haired woman turned back to Abby. “I prayed long and hard over it,” she explained, “and came to the conclusion that I just had to trust the Lord. That’s all any of us can do in the end anyway.”

“But Ella,” Abby protested, “that doesn’t mean you have to risk your life. You already have two children.”

“Devlin’s my husband, Abby.” Her friend’s eyes glowed with a loving conviction. “When I made my marriage vows, I cast my lot with him in every way. And Devlin needs me in every way. He’d never have strayed if I hadn’t turned him from my bed and heart.” She shook her head vehemently. “I’ll never, ever do that again.”

Abby stared back at Ella, myriad replies springing to mind. To trust, to love so deeply that one was willing to sacrifice all …

“I’m not sure I fully understand.” Abby took up the teapot and filled both cups with the rich, strong brew. She set the pot down. “But if this is what you want and it makes you happy, then I’m happy for you.”

Ella smiled. “You will understand someday. I know it; I feel it in my heart.”

“Perhaps.” Abby took a sip of tea. “Now,” she said when she’d set the cup back down, deciding it was best to change the subject, “tell me of Culdee Creek. How is everyone doing?”

“Well, let me see …”

To prolong the suspense, Abby supposed, Ella paused to stir a teaspoonful of sugar into her tea, then taste it before replying. Or perhaps instead, her thoughts swinging in a completely different direction as she noted the pensive look that suddenly darkened Ella’s eyes, she was trying to decide how to break some painful news, and stalling for time.

“How’s Conor?” Abby asked softly, sensing he was the topic her friend hesitated to broach.

The red-haired woman glanced away. “He’s doing … better. He doesn’t act so angry anymore, and that terrible, haunted look in his eyes …” Ella met Abby’s gaze. “I think he and Sally are beginning to work things out.”

Though Abby had left Culdee Creek in the hopes of just such an event occurring in her absence, this particular news was still hard to hear. Sally was Conor’s wife. Conor desperately needed to forgive her if he was ever to have any chance of healing. Yet even the most transitory consideration that he might actually come to love Sally again filled Abby with a dreadful, heart-wrenching pain.

One way or another, it seemed, her work at Culdee Creek would then be over. She would no longer be needed.

Abby looked down, fingering the rim of her teacup. “I’m glad to hear that,” she finally said. “It’s the best … the best thing that could happen.”

“In a sense, I agree. Sally, poor thing, needs Conor’s forgiveness. And Conor needs to forgive.”

Abby looked up. “Yes.”

“But what of you?” Ella reached over and took her hand. “How are
you
doing?”

“I’m doing fine.” Abby forced a smile. “I have Hannah and Jackson and a very nice job at Mrs. Water’s Millinery Shop.”

“Are you attending Sunday worship services?”

Abby looked down at her cup. “Sometimes.”

“Oh, Abby,” Ella cried, “don’t turn from the Lord. Not now, of all times. I know things seem dark and confused, but the Lord has His reasons.”

Abby blinked back a hot swell of tears. “I just don’t know anymore. I gave my whole heart to Conor. I’ve never loved a man like I love him. And he needed me. He and Beth.” She lifted tear-filled eyes to her friend. “There was no reason for God to take them from me. No reason at all!”

“God always has a reason, Abby. It’s just so hard sometimes for us to accept it.” She smiled sadly. “Fear gets in the way, doesn’t it? Fear of that great unknown, fear that God will require something that we cannot, or don’t want, to do. But we
can
, Abby. God never asks anything of us that He doesn’t give us sufficient strength to do. And He never, ever asks it unless it’s for our greater good.”

“I
know
all those things, Ella.” She sighed. “I just don’t
feel
them in my heart anymore.”

“Live them anyway,” her friend admonished, a fierce light burning in her eyes. “Faith isn’t grounded on emotions. It’s grounded on the will. It’s grounded in the act of taking up your cross and following the Lord wherever He leads, through good times and bad, through dark days and happy ones.

“We’re not tested and tempered in good times, Abby.” Ella released her hand and sat back in her chair. “Our true test,” she said softly, “lies in the dark night of our despair.”

22

Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.

Psalm 30:5

Later that night, long after Ella and Evan had headed back to Culdee Creek, long after Hannah and her son were sound asleep in their beds, Abby sat in her bedroom. In the flickering light of her kerosene lamp, she huddled in a worn old wing chair snugged up against the window, and stared, unseeing. Thoughts raced and tumbled in her head.

She had never seen Ella so strong and sure in her convictions as she had seen her today. There was a renewed joy and strength in her friend that Abby envied. Though her words had at times seemed hard and unyielding, Abby sensed, even then, that Ella had spoken for the Lord.

She was blessed to have a friend such as Ella, a woman who possessed the courage to face her own shortcomings and fears, and never let them defeat her. Fear truly did color so many aspects of one’s life. But to live in fear was to limit oneself, to blind the eyes, deafen the ears, and fetter the heart.

Sally, too, had overcome her fears. She had returned home after many years to face the righteous wrath and scorn of a husband she had deserted. But Sally knew it was the right and loving thing to do, no matter what the outcome. In the end, it now seemed the victory would be hers.

Next door, baby Jackson stirred, then began to wail softly. With a muted murmur, Hannah rose and padded to his cradle. Then, Abby heard no more.

Even Hannah had found the courage to escape the life she had formerly led. The girl had shared with Abby the numerous times she had attempted to escape and had failed, only to be severely beaten. Yet she had tried again and again, until she had succeeded at last.

Abby smiled. How blessed she was with the examples—and friendships—of so many courageous women. Each one was a shining inspiration to light her way. Yet she would never have met any of them, if she had not followed the Lord’s call to Culdee Creek.

Culdee Creek …

Abby closed her eyes. She had been so certain the Lord had called her there to the aid of Conor and Beth. She would never have guessed He might have had another motive, a motive that perhaps involved her as much as the two MacKays. She’d never have imagined that her own soul was in as great a peril.

Her faith, from childhood, had come so effortlessly. She had been immersed in it, lived it every waking moment. Her parents had seen to that, the good and pious people that they were. Then Thomas had taken up where her parents had left off, watching over her, continuing to hold her to the same high, if constricted expectations. She had never had to develop or understand her own personal response to God. She had never had to carry her own cross for the Lord, but always, always someone else’s.

Always, Abby thought with a wry grimace, until her life and all her former, predetermined beliefs had been devastated. That ordeal had begun with the loss of Joshua and Thomas. It had been brought to its zenith when she gave up Conor and Beth. Only now could she at last confront what it really meant to love and serve the Lord.

It had never been her place to save Conor and Beth. It had been the Lord’s. But her trust in Him had been wanting, though she’d always—and wrongly—imagined it had been her guiding force. Because her trust had been so weak, when the time came for her to leave Culdee Creek Abby had fought God, blamed Him and, like some petulant child, turned from Him.

Yet, like a patient father, a devoted lover, the Lord had led her through all the challenges and difficulties, and waited. Waited for her to end her flight, cease her doubts, open her eyes at last. Waited for her to approach Him as a grown, fearless, confident woman.

Waited … and never ever stopped loving her.

Perhaps it was the same with Conor. Perhaps that was why she had to leave him. Only now, deprived of everything that had come to matter to him, could Conor finally find his own way back to God.

Beloved, you understand at last.

With those words, whispered deep in her heart, certitude and a deep, abiding peace filled Abby. She slid from the chair and fell to her knees, her hands clasped before her. She bowed her head. Tears coursed down her cheeks.

“I offer up the sacrifice of the person most dear to my heart, Lord,” she prayed, “trusting that Your plan for him, as for myself, will lead us both to You. I thank You also for all that You’ve given me—good friends, precious insights, and a new freedom like I’ve never known. A freedom I now offer back to You … to do with what You will.”

So joy-filled she thought her heart might burst, Abby lifted her gaze heavenward. “It’s a good start on a new life, wouldn’t You say, Lord?” she asked. “A very good start, indeed.”

“Why did you leave us?”

At Conor’s softly couched question, the blond-haired woman turned her head on her pillow to look up at him. A smile lifted her lips. “Do you know how long, how ardently I’ve prayed,” she whispered, “for you to ask me that?”

“Well, I’m asking you now,” Conor replied huskily. If she only knew how much it cost him to ask …

A few months ago such an admission would’ve filled Conor with rage. He would have never willingly conceded Sally any victory—not after what she had done to him. But it was now the first of November; Sally had been back five months, and she was dying. There wasn’t much time left. Before it was too late, Conor needed to know, to understand, and to receive forgiveness as he gave it.

“Yes, you are.” For a long moment, it seemed as if Sally’s eyes focused on some distant place and time. Then, she sighed.

“I loved you very much once, Conor, but I didn’t return to win it back again,” she began at last. “I know that kind of love is long over for the both of us. Now we’re such different people than we were when we first wed. Also a bit battle-worn and scarred.” She managed a sad little smile. “But a lot wiser and stronger now, too.

“We were so young then. I don’t think either of us was really ready. I still had so many unfulfilled dreams—my music, a professional singing career. And I think you, so hungry for love and caught up in the romantic illusion of marriage, thought a wife and your own family was the answer to all your pain. Then we had Evan, and your father died, and times got even worse …”

The words came hard. At times Sally had to stop and cough. “You had to work so hard, and be away so much, just to save Culdee Creek. I was left home with a demanding baby, and the winter was especially long and bitter that last year. I began to feel as if I was being buried alive. It was then, God forgive me, and I take full responsibility for the decision, Conor, that I began to believe all of Andrew’s promises. He filled my head with such wild dreams. I began to imagine we were kindred spirits, and that only he could truly understand and love me as I deserved to be loved.”

“You never told me you were so unhappy.” Conor clasped his hands between his outspread legs.

“I tried to tell you in little ways, but you were so preoccupied with the ranch …” There was a long pause before Sally continued. “Perhaps I should’ve tried harder. Perhaps it was just easier to blame it all on you rather than face up to my part, and my responsibilities. Andrew offered such an easy answer, an answer far more attractive than the alternative of being your wife and Evan’s mother.”

“So you ran off with him, leaving me to face it all alone.”

The old pain and bitterness rose in Conor. For an instant, he wanted to get up and leave. But he did not. All these years he had wanted answers, wanted to know what had caused their marriage to fail. Now he would. He would find his own answers, and they would be good and honorable ones.

“Yes, I did,” Sally acknowledged his accusation calmly. “Fool that I was, I even thought for a time that I’d found the easy way out of all my problems. That my life would now be as it had always truly been meant to be.”

A sad, knowing smile touched her lips. “I couldn’t run, though, from my personal demons. I couldn’t run from my life’s work with the Lord. My singing career did well for a while, but Andrew soon began to squander the money I earned. Then, one night in a boarding-house in Denver, we got into a terrible fight. Andrew knocked over the lamp in our room. The curtains caught fire, and soon the whole room was ablaze. We managed to escape, but Andrew remembered some money he’d hidden beneath the mattress. He ran back inside for it.”

She drew in a long, deep breath and closed her eyes. “By then the whole upstairs was burning. The building was old and tinderbox dry. There was such chaos and confusion in the streets, what with terrified boarders milling about and the fire wagon and all the bystanders that I thought he had come back down and gotten lost in the crowd.” Sally opened her eyes. “But if he did, I never saw him again. And I, penniless, with only the clothes on my back, didn’t know what to do.”

“We heard of the fire and were notified that you’d died in it.”

“I didn’t do anything to change that idea, either,” Sally admitted. “In a sense I
had
died. I couldn’t come back to you after what I’d done. And my fine new life had gone up in flames.”

“So what did you do?”

“I got a job singing in one of the saloons. There I saw the fancy women making more money than I was. I decided I might as well get paid like them. It was the beginning of my journey into degradation and despair, a journey that didn’t end until Father Gabriel rescued me from the cribs of Cripple Creek.”

Conor groaned, then flung back his head. “Why didn’t you come home, Sally? Sure, I was madder than a hornet, but I still loved you then. I kept hoping against hope you’d come back to me. If only you had come home …”

“I was afraid, and plumb full of foolish pride, Conor. If I couldn’t forgive myself for what I’d done, how could I ever expect you to forgive me?”

Her questions gave him pause. Hadn’t he made similar excuses as reasons he could never allow himself to turn back to God? He had always known what such a commitment required, and it terrified him. He would have to open his heart, place his life in Someone else’s hands, and trust that it all would not be in vain. Yet how could he?

But how could he not? For a long while now, even before Abby had come into his life, Conor had known that his existence was incomplete, his heart empty. Perhaps it was the reason he had been so leery of taking Abby on as his housekeeper. He had sensed from the start that she would unsettle his life. Fool that he was, he had imagined her only a temporal threat. Then she had blindsided him. He had fallen in love with her and, in the process, had set free all the doubts, fears, and unresolved issues crying out for resolution. At times he’d hated her for it, even as he yearned for the joy that always seemed to dangle just beyond his reach.

Forgiveness …

There was so much to forgive, and Sally was only a part of it. The anger, the pain, the sense of betrayal had begun long before she had come into his life. It had started with his father, and with a God who seemed equally as harsh and rigid. His own father could never accept him. How could God?

Yet Abby had loved God, and she’d seen Him as a loving father, a faithful friend. How was it, Conor now wondered, that God could have so many faces? Or were most of those faces put on Him by the misunderstandings and false expectations of his children?

What had Sally said to him, that day he’d carried her upstairs after her coughing fit?
Don’t limit the Lord with your own shallow perceptions of Him, or assign Him a level of compassion equal only to yours …

His faith, he realized now, had been colored far more by his father’s meager view of God, than by anything else. It had been a faith sown upon stony ground. No wonder the seed scattered there had barely grown, before it was scorched and died. His faith had never been a faith adequate to weather the storms of life, and Conor had finally come to mistrust and despise it.

Then Abby had walked into his life, and all his previously held beliefs had crumbled. Yet even she had warned him. Standing close to her would not bring him to salvation. For that he had to walk on, past her, and find God in his own way.

For that, Conor now knew, he had to remember all the good people in his life. His mother, who spoke of making your heart a hallowed, humble bed for the Holy Child, and not letting pride separate you from God. The courage and goodness of his Scots ancestors, who had braved such terrible hardship to come to a new land, and who had never given up. Squirrel Woman, who had loved with such unconditional generosity, and their daughter, Beth, who thought the sun rose and set on him. And he must even consider Sally, who had come back to share the greatest of gifts—forgiveness.